


Pushing your pain around my door

by laudanum_and_wine



Category: The Expanse (TV), The Expanse Series - James S. A. Corey
Genre: (later) - Freeform, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canon-Typical Alcoholism, Canon-Typical Violence, F/M, Meet-Cute, Slow Romance, but with guns and spies and drama out the ears, inasmuch as Julie gets wise slowly and Joe is a distater, mature content
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-17
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-10 21:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 8
Words: 19,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28123878
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/laudanum_and_wine/pseuds/laudanum_and_wine
Summary: Joe meets Julie when she's young, and healthy, and full of righteous fury.  He learns to be less complacent and pessimistic, to try harder to help now, while he still can. She learns what loyalty looks like, and whom she can and can't expect it from.Modern AU - set somewhere in the USA, focused on the character study and interactions more than the plot. I just want to explore the impact these two would have had one one another had they been given a chance to get to know one another in actual fucking LIFE.
Relationships: Julie Mao/Joe Miller
Comments: 39
Kudos: 21





	1. Chapter 1

When he comes through the door, hand on his hip, on his gun, he had a gun, fuck- well when he comes in Julie is a little panicked. She freezes, hands raising slightly in reflex, trying to decide if she was afraid or angry. He had entered with a glare, his jaw set, and then the moment he laid eyes on her his face had relaxed.

"Julie," he said it loud enough that she heard him clearly, though he obviously hadn't meant to say it at all. A little louder he said, "You're alive."

Julie doesn't know how to respond to words that seemed half threatening but are also being delivered so reverently. She doesn't answer, just lowers her hands slowly.

The man entered the room, glanced behind him, and spoke quickly. His hand was no longer on his gun.

"Listen, I'm a detective, you're OPA: I know. Follow my lead and I'll explain later, got it?" His voice carries a trace of local accent.

Julie stays quiet.

"Clear! It's just an informant here, Havelock. Waste of fucking time," The man's posture changes, going from worried to frustrated in a moment.

"What?" And then a second man, shorter than her, comes in and speaks with no accent sounding like a bland actor.

"It's an OPA front all right, but she," the tall man jerks his thumb at her, "Is Julie, and is already a fuckin informant. You should'a told me they had you hold up here, kid: if it had been anybody else you'd be getting arrested." He was watching her expectantly, so she tried a reply.

"Sorry?"

"Fucking, sorry, she's sorry," the tall man shrugged helplessly at the short one then waved dismissively. "Call this in as a dead-end, will ya Havelock? I'll be right out."

The short man looked confused, frustrated, but left. The taller man's posture changes the moment his partner is gone, and Julie almost jumps out of her skin when his hands go to a pocket. He notices and pulls out a business card slowly, keeping his eyes on hers.

"Sorry. Here," he holds it out at arm's length. "Miller. Uh, Joe. Detective with Star Helix. I have to go, but listen, I have information about your parents-"

Julie scoffs and takes the card.

"Yeah, Daddy seems like a real piece of shit for what it's worth. But just, trust me, call me. Alright? Call. I'm on your side."

Julie stares.

"I have a gun, know who you are, know you’re OPA, and could have arrested you, alright? And I didn’t. Assume my little pantomime here was proof of good faith," he looks desperate, which surprises her.  
"Fine."

Then he’s gone. Julie leaves out a window as soon as he’s out of sight, calls her OPA contact from a phone booth, and spends three nights laying low on the floor of some other agent's living room.

She fishes out his business card a week later, calls just after dark, from the payphone in front of a cafe.

"Miller," she says simply as a greeting.

"Uh, yeah?"

"It's Julie," she can’t remember if he'd known her last name, so she doesn’t give it now.

There’s silence, then the sound of a cell phone being dropped, then "Shit, fuck, yes, hello? Julie?"

Julie makes an affirmative noise.

"Sorry. Uh, cell phone slipped. Thank you for calling me," he sounds far more serious than a man who'd just been startled into dropping his electronics.

"You mentioned my parents?"

"Can we meet to talk?" He asks.

"Only if you can make it to Peg's in Midtown right now," she meant for it to sound demanding, like an ultimatum, but isn't sure she managed it.

Miller is silent for a moment, then sounding amused he agrees.

When he arrives he seems alone. He even seems unarmed. Julie watches from across the street for several minutes while Miller first looks around then sits with what seemed like some resignation and orders a coffee.

"Took you long enough," he mutters when she’s a few feet behind him, then turns to watch her walk around the table.

"Pardon me for distrusting shady cops hired by my parents to black bag me back home."

Miller's face twists, she can't read the expression, then he nods. He might have been almost glad to see her at first, and she only noticed now that she could compare that first look to his current expression.

"My parents did hire you," she says, but sits down anyway. If he was talking to her maybe they didn't want her home, just wanted something from her, or to deliver a message.

"Well, they hired someone who strong armed my boss who told me to find you, off the books. The implication was that I should track you down, right? Find the poor runaway rich girl, in over her head, being taken advantage of by the big scary OPA. Then call in the cavalry to stuff you into the back of an unmarked SUV and drag you back to Malibu," Miller leans forward.

Julie forced herself to hold his gaze, not to look around, not to stand or panic, and says flatly "So where is the cavalry?"

Miller ignores her acid tone and goes on, "Only once I find you, to my surprise, Patty Hearst here is practically co-chair of the local OPA, second only to Dawes. You don't seem like the damsel type, Miss Mao."

He wants to ask why, why her parents want her, why she's working for the OPA, to explain to him what he can't sort out for himself. She thinks he's more likely to know most of those answers than she is.

They let the silence stretch uncomfortably, neither wanting to break before the other. He may have been a cop, probably had practice waiting quietly on suspects or in interrogations, but she was a Mao and had been practicing frigid silences from across dining tables since before she had all her teeth. He was a professional, but he also wanted something.

Eventually Miller caves, breaks the silence with useless words, "I'm not working for your father."

"Why." She isn't that interested, just needs him on the defensive.

This silence this time is obviously him attempting to find the right words. Miller opens and closes his mouth several times.

"It's hard to explain."

"Try."

"First I get this case, learn about you, get some leads. Then I was informed that my boss didn't want you found. Gave me the case hoping I'd fuck it up and lose you-"

"Why?" This time she was interested.

"I don't know, I need more data. But it made me question what I was being used for, and by whom. I don't mind being a pawn, but I want to know who for."

"You told your partner I was an informant, why?"

"He wasn't in on the slightly illegal aspects of finding you, but I'd mentioned your name in front of him a few times. I didn't want you in the station until I knew why they wanted you lost and not found again. I wasn't sure that would be safe for you," Miller sipped his coffee. He'd said a lot, but most of it made absolutely no sense to Julie. She needed more information, but felt too close to this, too much like this was all ad libbed. Either he was lying or he knew next to nothing. Yet.

"Great. Good to meet you Miller, and I hope to never see you again," she almost stands but-

"Wait," Miller's hand is over hers, just for a moment, before he pulls it back. She realizes a facade had just dropped, just for a moment, a fake casualness she hadn't realized he'd been projecting until it was gone.

Julie waits.

"I should drop this, I should-" Miller swears, shrugs, and the facade is back, if shakey. "I'm going to find out why they wanted you to stay lost, and why I was being used as a pawn and fall-guy all in one go. I don't particularly care if you end up in Malibu or the morgue, but I can't pretend I'm okay with being jerked around like this, I need to know if something’s rotten in Star Helix. If you give me a way to contact you we can work together."

Julie considers this, lets the silence stretch again, then holds out her hand. He stares for a moment before she clarifies, "Phone, Miller. Give me your phone." She finds she is smiling, slightly as he hands it over.

"Oh wow, this is an antique. Give me a second to remember how to use this," she says to Miller, holding his dinged up flip phone and miming confusion. It's actually not much older than her burner phone, so she quickly checks his contacts and call log: all to and from "Havelock" or unsaved contacts that don't recur. The history goes back far enough that she's sure this isn't a burner. She wants to check his texts but she's been faking confusion too long as it is, so she simply adds her own contact to his phone and passes it back.

Miller takes the phone back with a look that says he knows what she was doing, a patronizing little smile, and Julie finds herself rolling her eyes like they're actually casual acquaintances or friends.

"I'll call you if I find out anything you should know," he says.

"Should I keep an eye out for other questionable cops, black SUVs?"

"No," Miller considers the issue then stands. "No, officially this is still my case. I can keep pretending to be incompetent for a while longer without suspicion, keep them from asking anyone new to find you."

"Calling your mark, telling her the plan, letting her go: who says you need to pretend?"

Miller doesn't reply, just flips her off casually and leaves, walking to the East until he's lost in the twilight.

Julie moves to a new apartment, under a new name, bleaches her hair and cuts it to around her ears, starts wearing bright red lipstick. She waits three weeks, then tries to forget about the strange detective, tries to throw herself into her OPA work and the community garden on the weekends and handing out free food in the park.. It feels good, to share lunch with men and women she considers her friends and peers, sloppy burritos and bottled water at dusk, and someone with a bluetooth speaker trying to get them to dance. They all stay late, laughing, talking, half of these people are OPA members just trying to give back, and the other half are just people from the community, and Julie feels like she belongs, right here, in this moment.

It's dark when Julie walks home, but downtown doesn't scare her at night any more. She goes to the dojo every week and carries a too-small knife in her bra and walks with her head up.

After three blocks she hears footsteps behind her and does not flinch, does not turn, just considers the street ahead. If these are regular muggers she should stay on the well traveled roads, but if they're trying to kidnap her she should stay off all streets and away from any cars.

There's a guy up ahead who won't make eye contact with her, but is looking behind her. There’s a guy rounding the block looking too casual. Too many footsteps. This is a crew.

Julie decides she'd prefer to lose her wallet or even her life rather than be dragged off to Malibu, so takes the next right into an alley too small for any black SUV to squeeze into. Her thug follows.

She dawdles looking at her phone, waits for the thug to approach, but it's a familiar voice she hears next.

"Hey, uh, kid," Miller says, fast walking down the alley, somehow having gotten into the alley after her but before the ominous footsteps. She could hear him trying not to use her name, to not confirm who she was. "Don't be mad, but I mighta used you as bait."

Julie almost hits him, but then one of the thugs she's actually scared of rounds the corner, sees her and Miller, and charges them. Another guy appears. Then it's a fistfight. Miller doesn't seem to have a gun, which is good: she doesn't want him shooting anyone and her having to go to the police station about it. In between dodging her opponents and putting one down with a dislocated shoulder, Julie catches glimpses of Miller fighting. He's scrappy, his hits are weak, but his long body gives him one hell of a reach and he fights dirty. One of their attackers goes down after a knee to the balls, and she laughs.

Before she knows it she's wiping blood off her nose with the inside of her jacket while Miller searches the unconscious would-be kidnappers for some kind of clue. He swears when all he comes up with is a lone cell phone and holds it up to show a lock screen.

"I don't have anyone I can take this to at the station. I don't want them to know-"

Julie plucks it out of his hands, powers it down, and pockets it.

"I can get data off this," she says.

"Good."

They spend a minute straightening their clothes, wiping up blood, and Miller peels off his now badly ripped vest and throws it into the gutter. They walk out into downtown looking more or less presentable.

"Bait?" She asks, wanting to be angry.

"You might have checked in at the Burrito Project event in the park on social media."

"Funny, I don't have any social media accounts."

Miller shrugs. He's marginally more tech savvy than he lets on, and Julie is not altogether surprised.

Julie hands him her own flip phone, "Put your name in there, I'll call you when I have the phone unlocked."

"Does this mean we're working together, Miss Mao?"

Julie smiles, casually flips him off, and walks away.


	2. Chapter 2

Julie considers knocking on the front door of his little beige house, imagines standing on the poured cement slab under the dim lightbulb, and just knocking like he'd invited her over and this was a normal social visit. She glances down at the bag of oranges in her hand, her flimsy excuse for a visit, then takes a few steps down the path to his front door and pauses: the house is quiet. His car is here, looking sad and cold, but the only lights are the porch and kitchen, so he's not home.

Even if he were here Miiller probably wouldn't let her in, he barely knows her. It's been four month of him working with the OPA, or rather of him working with Julie. They still haven't quite sorted out who in Star Helix wants her left un-found, who was jerking him around, but in between false leads and bad ideas Miller has accidentally or incidentally helped the OPA quite a bit. She doesn't think he'd help anyone but her.

She lets herself in via the bathroom window, which he hasn't latched probably because he's probably under the impression that no one could squeeze into it. She knocks over a bottle of three-in-one soap on her way through the shower, then rights it and picks her bag of oranges up from the floor when she'd dropped them.

She turns on the light, rifles through his medicine cabinet one handed, not really curious but feeling like it's the thing one does after sneaking in. An old fashioned double edged razor, two unopened containers of aspirin, a half-empty and long expired bottle of opioids with a note about back pain on the label, a bottle of antidepressants half gone but filled six months ago. Spare toothbrush, toothpaste, styptic pencil, floss, a very large and mostly empty box of butterfly bandages, gauze pads, iodine, nothing interesting. She sniffs at a mostly empty bottle of cologne, closes her eyes, picturing Miller dressed up, maybe with some product in his hair, a tie even. Going where: a company party? A date?  
She puts the bottle back, uses the corner of the bar soap to draw a smiley face on the mirror, then leaves the room.  
Julie hadn’t ever really considered the room before, devoid of it’s normal occupant. The few times she’s been here it’s been short visits, Miller inviting her in long enough for him to get a file, or a flash drive, or long enough for her to tie her hair up and flip her sweatshirt inside out in a minimalist attempt at a disguise. In all those moments she’d been focused on him, or on staying out of the line of sight of the windows, or on not letting her wet hair drip all over his floor. Now she has time, and she’d already invaded the privacy of his medicine cabinet after all. 

Julie drops the oranges onto a small kitchen table and starts in that room. Dried food, noodles and cans of soup, about what she expected from him but with less alcohol than she’d anticipated. The coffee looks expensive, as does the french press, and after she smells it she can’t resist making a pot.   
While the water comes to a boil Julie wanders the living room, turns a lamp on, finds the stereo and twists the volume down before clicking it on as well. The little light blinks once, “phono,” and Julie peers around until she finds the record player. She lifts the plastic case and starts the record, music mellow and low in the half dark room. Within a few minutes she is sitting on one side of an obviously under-used loveseat sipping black coffee and wondering at the fact that there was no television in the room. Maybe in the bedroom? That was a line she wasn’t crossing tonight.   
The keys in the door break Julie from her distracted musing, and her eyes track from the darkened bedroom to the front door.   
Miller is standing in his own doorway blinking at her.   
“Welcome home,” Julie says, and holds up her mug of coffee in a faux toast.   
“Okay,” Miller replies, and slowly closed the door. He blinks, combs down his hair with one hand then rubs his face like he is tired. “Uh, to what do I owe the honor? You on the lamb or something?”   
“Just visiting,” Julie smiles. “I brought oranges.”   
“Why?” Miller shoots her a glance under a confused brow, then walks to the dark bedroom. After a jangle of keys and shuffling noises he reemerges a few seconds later without hat, shoes, or jacket. He looks surprisingly relaxed, unwound, like finding her here was normal.  
“Because you bring a gift when you visit a friend’s home,” Julie thought it was obvious.   
“We’re friends now?” Miller asks, rolling his sleeves up as he walks to the kitchen. Julie stands and follows him while he speaks, leaning in the kitchen doorway as he pours a cup out of the french press for himself. “Last I recall, you were blackmailing me into giving you what you wanted and I was just... Letting it happen, I guess.”   
Julie holds out her cup for a top-off. Miller doesn't move, just raises one eyebrow.  
“It’s polite, Joe, I’m your guest.”   
“Didn’t invite you,” he says, but is already refilling her cup. She doesn’t reply.

He smells like whiskey and stale smoke, and this close up she can see the way his eyes dart or hold too long in one place. Miller sips the coffee, looking past her into the living room. The moment is suddenly awkward and she can’t tell why.   
“I like the stereo system,” She tries, and walks back to the kitchen table, sits next to the oranges. Behind her she can hear Miller gulp down his coffee then refill his cup a second time. After a few seconds he exits the kitchen and sits slowly in the chair beside her, carefully, holding onto the wooden table.   
“Oh. You’re hammered,” Julie realizes it to be true as she says it, and grins.   
Miller just closes his eyes for a beat longer than normal and drinks his black coffee, “It’s my Friday. I didn’t think I was gonna have to entertain.” 

Julie lets that hang in the air, wondering if he’d been drinking alone, with friends, with a woman. She's not entirely surprised that she hates that thought, but doesn't want to consider it right now. 

"Why are you here Julie?" Miller looks tired, and drunk, shoulders a little hunched.

"I brought you something else too. Got any paper?"

Miller points at a table which Julie realizes is an incredibly barren arts and crafts desk, so she stands and rifles through a drawer until she has a yellow legal pad and pen. She returns to the kitchen table, writes briefly for three lines, then puts the pen down.

"What's that?" Miller doesn't even try to read the paper.

"That's a detailed description of a local drug dealer, along with the date and location of where he's going to be making a major deal," Julie keeps her voice casual and begins to peel an orange. Miller pries open an eyelid and pulls the paper closer, so she goes on. "He was selling weed to college kids and we were fine with that. What's more emblematic of college than Pink Floyd and pot, right? Who cares. But now he's selling harder shit, to younger kids, and the OPA wants him out of the neighborhood."

"And you want me to do it for you?" He sounds grumpy about it.

"Joe," she realizes her voice is hard but doesn't care. "He's selling meth to high school students."

There's a long silence while Julie finishes peeling her orange, watching Miller grind his teeth and watch her back. His eyes are narrowed, one obscured by his hair, like he's sublimated his embarrassment into anger. 

"Dawes was going to have him delt with. Permanently," Julie says delicately, picking apart a bit of orange rind. "But I thought you might like to solve the issue without it involving dragging a body from a river. I'm not wrong, am I?"

She glares back and Miller crumbles, shakes his head, sets down his coffee. She can't stand seeing his weakness, then, and looks away. He was supposed to be the hard ass, the bastard, a cog in a system she abhorred who was being used for good. He was supposed to be a jerk who she could use for less-than-lethal errands. He wasn't supposed to be kind, to care, to be nuanced...

Julie stands and sets the peeled orange on the table before him. His eyes are closed, he does not move. She hesitates, considers what she wants. Julie steps closer, carefully touches his temples, fingers brushing his skin to hold him in place. She presses her forehead to his just for a moment, breathes in, listens to him holding his own breath.

"Some time we should get a drink together. Pretend we really are friends, Joe. Admit that we already are."

Miller nods slightly against her forehead, breathes again. She feels him shift, begin to look up, and she bolts away for the front door like she hasn't noticed.

She yanks it open before she speaks, "Eat that orange and drink some water before bed, Miller. Have a good weekend."

Julie walks and considers the detective, and the oranges, and why she asked Dawes to let her take care of the drug dealer. She hadn't told him that she was going to hand it off to her mysterious cop contact, but she suspects Dawes knew since he'd agreed with her easily. It made Julie pause mid-step: was there a catch here she'd missed? Dawes normally didn't like her working with Miller. She'd never given Dawes the detective's name, but Dawes knew she had some contact, someone above beat cop but below captain who she trusted. He normally acted as though even the thought of working with a cop repelled him… Julie turns, trying to make a decision: go back to Joe? Tell him what, her boss may have lied, may have omitted some data?

Joe, in his shirtsleeves and socks, relaxing in his livingroom to the record she put on, the coffee she made, and she can remember the way he smelled-

She stands in the street and sends a text instead, "Hey, be careful: that data is from Dawes FWIW."

She makes it another block before she gets the reply, "FWIW?"

"For what it's worth," she types out.

"Thanks. I'll try not to get shot."

Julie smiles. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so the title in my docs file for this story is "oranges are a love language" b/c apparently fruit is a recurring theme in my fics..? Full of Stars was where I noticed I do that, but my god, really, it's a thing. Nothing shows you love someone like fruit: it's a casual gift, it's providing for them, it shows you're thinking of them in the moment, it's literally and metaphorically sweet, etc. You want to win my heart? Peel me an orange every day.   
> (My boyfriend does this, except it's often energy drinks and I am wired 100% of the time thanks to that fucker)
> 
> Anyway. A bag of oranges is, for some reason, the go-to present in my family for casual-house-warming or just-visiting or thanks-for-dog-sitting. It's my social ice breaker, like "I brought something but obviously it's not a Big Gift, and now you have to show ME hospitality and invite me in." 
> 
> How to Manipulate People with Citrus should be the fic title, shit.


	3. Chapter 3

"What the fuck are you doing here?”

Joe looked from her to his drink and back to her again, “Is this a trick question..?”

Julie had ducked into the bar from off the street trying to get out of the late afternoon heat and stay out of sight. She wasn't supposed to know anyone here, it was just a rest stop for her, a place to get her bearings and make a plan.

"What the fuck are you doing here?" Miller asked mildly.

"Avoiding the cops," she hissed.

"Bad news kid " Miller said mildly and caught the bartender's eye. He held up his beer and two fingers, and a minute later was pushing an overpriced microbrew toward her. "So is there an APB out on you or somethin?"

"Not yet," Julie glared. She was thinking, planning. 

Miller actually glared back, momentarily serious, "Julie. Is there going to be?"

"No, just. I need to stay off the streets for a few hours while they look for brunettes of my height and weight. Nothing dangerous… Just some colorful vandalism of the Mayor's house," Julie sipped her beer to hide any smile she might have. She knew she'd failed because Miller was smiling back: he hated authority figures as a rule, any lie that involved petty discomfort to someone in power was something he'd be happy to believe. That also meant he didn't know about the bust she'd avoided in downtown. Didn't know she had jumped out the window during an OPA meeting just hours before, when the cops had tried to serve a search warrant, and now her knees were bruised under her jeans and her wrist was still aching from breaking her fall.

"Well considering you're doing the public a service I'd be happy to give you a lift home."

"You're at least two beers in."

"Sure, let's say two. And I'm thinkin I mighta walked here," he patted down his pockets for keys, hands coming up empty.

"Jesus," Julie shook her head. She wanted to be exasperated by Miller but found he was just slightly charming instead. The adrenaline high was still in effect for her, and she liked the idea of a cop on her side for a while, "We could walk to my place, you sober up there and head home." 

"Yeah, your OPA roommates will love a pig just hanging out at yours for a few hours in your hip Midtown apartment. No problem."

Julie drank her beer and glared at him, "How do you know I have roommates?"

"Lucky guess," Miller smirked, propped his chin on his palm. He was obviously pleased that she'd just confirmed his assumption. Julie was amused that he'd guessed the location right too, but luckily he moved on before she could over inflate his ego with that confirmation. "Counter offer: you come to mine and lay low for a bit. No one in my neighborhood will recognize you or care."

"I could just leave you here and walk home, to my own house, alone," Julie pointed out, and drank her beer. If he didn't have a car then she didn't have to stay sober, and drinking with him kept him as her temporary bodyguard for longer. He'd bought, after all, and while she hadn't almost died today she had narrowly avoided jail time.

"True, but if you get stopped by cops walking home alone you're probably fucked, right? Weekend in jail, no fun. Less chance of that if I walk with you," Miller said, apparently aware of what she was doing. Then he pointed like this it was important, "And you like me for whatever reason. I'm entertaining or something, fun to keep around. Admit it."

Julie frowned seriously, pretending to consider it. She tipped her head back and forth, "On the one hand you're an idiot. On the other, well, leaving you here to drink alone would be irresponsible: only a terrible person lets their friend drink alone, and during the day no less."

"Pretty sure it's sunset."

"It's not."

"Bet it will be by the time we finish another round," Miller already had his hand in the air, another two fingers held up.

They had been doing this silly dance for months, not talking about whatever strange friendship they'd cobbled together. Not talking about how they couldn't quite justify how much time they spent together. 

Miller had been a dark horse from the start. At first Julie had thought he was giving her tips about the when and where of police forces because Miller had wanted to join the OPA and be their spy, help the cause from within the police force. Then later she'd thought he wanted her, and the information was something he'd expect payment for later. But the come-ons never came, the anticipated lechery was absent. Miller continued to provide data and so was keeping her, and by extension the OPA, just a step ahead of the police force. He didn't seem to want shit in return. Eventually she'd considered that he might be a very strange undercover agent, a good cop pretending to be a bad cop instead of pretending to not be a cop at all. It was such a bad disguise, such an obvious cliche, that no one would take it at face value. Hiding in plain sight. It would have been the kind of double-think that Miller excelled at, and she'd have believed it if she hadn't had him hold her hair while she puked from a riot induced concussion. If she hadn't had to help him wash pepper spray out of his eyes after he ended up on the wrong side of one of those riots.

If she didn't know him, if she didn't like him. If she didn't trust him.

When they left the bar it was indeed just before sunset, the dim haze of twilight starting as the buildings blocked the last glow of the sun. They were far less drunk than they were acting, probably because Miller had insisted on bottles of water between their beers, but they made it out the front door both laughing, Julie leaning against Miller as she chuckled.

"Why the hell cheese though?" She asks.

"The way I figure it, they'd heard about the maple syrup heist-"

"I'm sorry, the what now?" They are a block from the bar, headed to his neighborhood. She doesn't want him to know where she lives, still. Maybe just for the joke of it now.

"The maple syrup heist, 2011, in Canada," Miller clarified, and she was about to interrupt with so very many questions when he went on. "Some brilliant schmucks in Quebec stole eighteen million worth of syrup, it took years. Anyway, my guess is our cheese thieves thought if Canadian maple syrup was so expensive, Vermont cheddar had to have some inherent value too."

"It's perishable!"

"Uhuh," Miller nodded, and jabbed at the air with a finger like she'd found his point for him. "That's exactly why we had to write it all off as spoilage. I had cheddar in my freezer for months."

Julie wheezes out a laugh, leans into the detective's shoulder, inhales the lingering citrus of his laundry detergent, feels his hand grip her arm in something like concern. Beyond his shoulder she sees the black and white police car turning left from a cross street and headed their way.

"Shit," she is not laughing.

Miller does not look, seems to instinctively know better than to turn. Maybe it was her tone, maybe her hand jerked where she seems to have clutched a handful of his coat.

"Cops?" Miller asks, casually. 

"Yeah, patrol car," Julie replies. The cop shouldn't matter, shouldn't be an issue, she knows that: there are cops all over, they're as common as flies these days. Still, she is suddenly and painfully sober. 

"No big deal," Miller says casually. He spins her gently and keeps her walking forward, and she can feel an affected swagger to his steps. He reels her close on his side, near the buildings and away from the street, and does something with his other hand. "Why don't you do some window shopping?"

He turns her gently as the patrol car approaches, and she leans down slightly, pretending to examine a case of succulents in the storefront. Her hand reaches out, tucks her phone between a potted plant and the wall. Inside the shop is dark, and so she is able to watch their reflection, watch how Miller has trapped his coat behind the hand in his pocket, has let the glitter of a badge on his hip show. The face in the patrol car is vague. Miller purses his lips and gives a half wave. The cop continues his slow crawl down the block, makes a left, and is gone. 

"You made that seem so easy," Julie says as she turns back to face Miller.

"Lying by omission," Miller shrugs and falls back into step with her down the block. "It's no single convincing lie, it's five little things that make stopping you seem pointless: you window shopping, me rolling my eyes about it, us having a tipsy swagger, the hint of a badge. The officer saw some or all of that and made up his own narrative of why we were obviously not worth hassling. Stay relaxed, convince your arms and eyes that it's the truth, then lie with your whole body."

Julie zips up her jacket, considering when she's going to part ways with Miller, both tonight and in the long run. Sometimes she forgets who he is, what he does. To remind herself she needles him about it, "Did they teach you that when you became a cop?"

"Nah, I learned that back when my profession was pickpocket. But it has helped, over the years."

Julie thinks that answer should surprise her, but it doesn't. She walks a few more blocks, into the remnants of old 1950's suburbia which still lingers in patches south of downtown. She waits for him to turn left down his street before she pauses behind him, turns right instead, as though that's the way she's actually going.

"Night Miller."

"Night kid," he replies casually, as though he is unsurprised, doesn't care. She wonders how to tell when he lies.

She takes a few random turns through the suburbs, smiling at the abandoned toys of kids and pets, then heads North again, back to the shop, to retrieve her cell phone. 

She spends the night in an all-hours laundromat, waiting until dawn to check in with Dawes via text. The citrus soap scent is familiar, and lulls her into sleep a few times throughout the night, until she wakes with a start to move or check the time. Pretend not to be loitering. When Dawes gives her an address to meet him at, she considers what she will tell the OPA about how she stayed low-profile through the night, what she will tell them she did after diving out a window. Why she is safe when so many other agents are not. Dawes seems to hate Miller, and she thinks that she will tell him the truth: she got a beer with a friend, went window shopping, did some laundry. She will keep her posture relaxed, vague, and will lie with her whole body.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Update today is dedicated to darling Phobi, who is going through the absolute WRINGER right now and could probably use a hug. Hopefully this will suffice.


	4. Chapter 4

He finds her at a park, sitting on a bench in the shade. The air is still morning-cool and the grass half damp, and across the sunlit center of the park there are children playing soccer, or at least kicking a soccer ball and shouting. Miller was just walking past, paused when he saw a familiar profile, and so he makes a wide approach to ensure he's not startling a stranger by mistake. A few meters away she sees him in her periphery and turns, smiling at him unexpectedly. He's almost star struck by that smile, and he wonders if she knows it.

"Miller," she says simply.

"Nice day," he replies while watching the kids. Closer up he's finally realized Julie is wearing some kind of jogging outfit, too much lycra and skin showing. Miller knows himself well enough to know he's definitely going to stare if he looks at her, so he doesn't look.

"Yeah, good morning for a jog," Julie is looking up at him. He feels more than sees her moving over, making space on the bench for him. Miller wages an internal debate for a moment, the desire to spend time with Julie weighing against the odds that he was bothering her, but then again she was the one who made room for him-

He sits.

"Obviously I was just out running, but what brings you out bright and early on a lovely sunny day like this? I thought you lived in a cave, surrounded by bats and cigarette smoke, broding like some noir character. Were you looking for me?" Julie sounds not quite tense, like she expected he had been, like he must come bearing bad news. 

"Nope," Miller shakes his head, relaxes into the seat, crosses his ankles. "Just walking out for some coffee, no ulterior motives. You're the one in my neighborhood, after all."

"Who says it's not my neighborhood too?" Julie counters. 

This has become their one joke, the only flippant thing they've managed to share is his half-serious attempts at finding out where she lives. As though he's still a cop gathering data on a suspect, and not a man well and truly under her thumb already. Miller just raises an eyebrow until she shrugs and confesses.

"You're right, it's not. I just like the park here."

"No parks in your neighborhood, noted."

Julie laughs, really laughs, and he can't help but look over and stare, just a little.

Her hair is an absolute wreck, finally dyed black again, curled near her temples where it's still slick with sweat. The light flush of exertion is painted across her nose and chest, but the pink tint on her shoulders looks like a sunburn. She's wearing a mismatched jogging set, white and grey sports bra and blue leggings, and though she doesn't have her usual necklace on he catches the glitter of earrings in the dancing sunlight passing through the leaves above. His eyes linger on the skin of her ribs, a scar on her forearm, and Miler has to turn his head to watch the soccer game. Someone is crying in the middle of the field, but a mother is already walking out and cooing comfort at the child.  
It takes him a full minute to get the words out, and to tone down the usual level of casual pick-up he’d normally have in his voice, “Would you like to come get a coffee?” 

Julie is silent, so he has to turn back to see her reaction, and by the time he looks at her there is a half-smile on her face.   
“I don’t know, are you buying?”   
Miller smothers any desire to reply with something about her definitely not having a wallet on her and him knowing this because her outfit is fucking painted on, and instead stands and says, “Sure.”  
Julie jumps up, touches her toes and stretches her arms while he keeps his eyes on the no longer crying child, and then turns to him.   
“Want to jog there?”   
“Not even a little.”   
“What’s the matter, Miller: afraid I’ll leave you in the dust?” She’s grinning.   
“Mh,” Miller pretends to consider it, shifts his feet. “Didn’t wear my running shoes.”  
Julie shrugs, then reaches up and tugs a rubber band out of her hair, shaking it loose with her fingers. Once done she gestures with an arm as though he’s meant to lead, and so he does, down Elm street and to Fifteenth. They manage to talk about things that aren’t revolution or politics, they manage to talk about the community garden on Glendale, the slow development of midtown and the renovation of the theater, and if the sculptures on the museum lawn are any good or just overpriced scrap metal. By the time they get to the shop Miller has gotten her to snort in laughter just one, and realizes he’s grinning at the noise. She is graceful and guileless where he is neither, and it is intoxicating.   
They wait behind a college kid ordering something with too many shots of espresso and Julie considers the menu. Miller orders his americano, then steps back and listens as Julie orders an extra sweet chai tea with two shots of espresso in it, and he knows he doesn’t quite manage not to roll his eyes.   
“What?” Julie asks as he pays the barista.   
“Nothing. I just should have pegged you for a syrup drinker.”   
“Oh, so you’re one of those coffee purists, are you? Going to give me shit for enjoying my caffeine rather than suffering through it?”   
“Hey,” Miller’s coffee is ready, probably because it’s only two ingredients. He lifts the cup and gestures with it, “I thoroughly enjoy my caffeine.”   
“Right, right. Also a nice dose of petty judgement”   
“If I can’t be petty and judgemental about beverages what’s gonna get me out of bed in the morning.”   
The barista hands Julie her drink and she takes a sip, “You could go jogging with me. That’ll wake you up.” 

Miller turns on a dime and walks out of the room, grateful Julie laughs as she follows.They end up on the patio, sitting across from one another at a wide table, watching the birdfeeder. The silence isn't as amiable now.

"Do you have to work at it?" She eventually asks, sipping her coffee.

"At what?"

"At being a judgemental asshole," her face is guileless, like it was a pleasant question. 

Miller sneers dismissively, looks away.

"No, really," Julie presses.

"You're mad that I made fun of your coffee?" He scoffs, not really meaning to. He hadn't meant to make fun of the chai-whatsit either, but now he's made his bed and is stuck in it.

"No, not really," Julie considers her coffee. "I don't care if you like my coffee. I find it interesting that you felt the need to be insulting about it."

"I guess I'm just an insulting guy," The words are out before he realizes they're a lie, and stupid, and somehow the mental inertia of being defensive won't let him take them back.

"I don't think so."

"Well you don't know me," God damnit, again?

Julie looks calm but she stands, picks up her coffee, and he stammers into a panic: she can't go, he cannot have just insulted and frustrated her into leaving, not yet. Miller feels almost nauseous from the rush of forcing past his own emotional bullshit into something adjacent to vulnerability, something he hasn't done in years. It takes effort, but he's tired of the easy thing, and despite being an insulting guy he isn't a moron.

"Wait," he didn't remember reaching for her, but sure enough that was his hand on her forearm, that was the cool of her skin against his fingertips. She waited. He remembers the first time they talked, at the cafe, and trying to stop her then. How she'd gone ridgid at his touch, but now she isn't. He doesn't remove his hand, she doesn't pull away, and that makes it easier to speak. 

He works his jaw before saying it, trying to find the words, "I'm sorry. I didn't intend to be flippant with you, Julie. I don't know why-"  
“Try the syrup,” Julie says, pushes the cup at him, and sits in the chair next to him. His hand slips off her arm as she moves, but she's closer now, not a table away. She doesn't look forgiving, but then again she didn't really look angry before. Just curious. 

The chai is, predictably, delicious. He tells her as much and she just nods.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Miller, buddy, pal: you have to TRY dude.
> 
> Anyway, I feel like the status and intensity of their relationship is vacillating chapter by chapter, but I'm attributing that to the flips in POV and the fact that there's so much they have to build- attraction, respect, trust, god damn tolerance for snarky bullshit, etc. That's my excuse. 
> 
> Funny story, I wrote the almost-last chapter first on this fic, then had to backtrack to fill in blanks? I'm a moron.


	5. Chapter 5

Julie had come here to forget her troubles and instead they seem to have followed her to this exact bar. She had been slipping out of the ladies room when she saw that across the length of the narrow room a crowd of seven laughing people were entering the bar, and even a few shots of vodka into the evening she recognized the team jackets of her old Razorback Racing crew.

She'd known they were in town for a race, she'd known the people who had once been friends and family would be in her city, breathing her air. She hadn't expected them to literally be drinking her booze, though, Julie had thought a daytime drinking binge in a halfway tasteless bar was her refuge. It wasn't supposed to be the front line.

As she looks around for options now she sees one, between Julie and the crowd: Joe Miller is just sliding into a booth and is alone except for his drink. She feels a tiny amount of her tension ebb.

"Hey Miller," she slides into the booth beside him. "Can you be my pretend boyfriend for a bit or would that be terribly inconvenient?"

"Not inconvenient at all, dear," he smiles without a trace of surprise at her appearance. At his agreement Julie moves closer, until she is pressed against him, arm around him, and he finally asks "Everything alright?"

Julie nods, "Just need a buffer, keep smiling."

Miller purses his lips like that wasn't an answer (which she supposes it wasn't) and sips his bourbon. After a moment he offers it to her with a raised brow.

"God no, if I drink any more my liver might actually leave my body," Julie replies, then shifts in his arms to casually look around the room. Thus far the evening had been relatively shit, but sitting here with someone who didn't hate her, didn't want anything from her, was willing to do her this favor? That helped a little.

"You're drunk?" He sounds uncomfortable.

"Just past tipsy, but yeah."

"It's six in the evening Jules-"

"Uh-huh," she cuts him off. He couldn't know she hated that name though he should have guessed. She looks past a group of laughing men, searching for the green shirt and Razorback team jacket she'd seen earlier, swallowing against tension as the room swims a little. "Been drinking since four."

She feels Miller's hands on her arms, moving her gently away, which was how she realizes that her movements had her pressed too close to him. She lets herself be scooted back, smiling in embarrassment. 

"What's going on kid," Miller is trying to catch her eye, and she lets him, meeting his gaze for a few long seconds. The warping clarity of alcohol lets her see all his flaws at once instead of the man himself: the wrinkle in his brow, the dark circles below his eyes, the uneven edge of one sideburn, the crows feet only made worse by his glare, the way the roots of his hair were just a little greasy, the wrinkle in his brow, again, which she realized she'd reached up to smooth out with an index finger-

Miller catches her hand, expression inscrutable to her now.

"Some old friends are in town," Julie says.

Miller looks like he can't quite see the problem there, but is still holding her hand.  
"Juliette?" A woman's voice.

Julie drags her eyes away from Miller, turns to the beautiful woman in the green shirt, and smiles, "Sandra."

She feels Miller loosen his grip on her hand, but she clutches his fingers, holds on. 

"I thought that was you, I haven't seen you in ages. Sorry to interrupt, it's just, god Julie. It's been so long!"

"It has."

"How are you?" Sandra is pushing black curls from her eyes as she speaks, leaning her weight against the table to get close enough to be heard. The Razorback logo on her coat shimmers with silver embroidery.

"I'm good," Julie manages.

"We've missed you so much. The team isn't the same without you."

"I miss it too," Julie finds herself saying it before she even has to think. It sounds too genuine, too real, so she laughs and tries to dismiss the emotion, adds, "Don't really have a legal excuse to speed these days."

"I imagine. So what are you up to?"

Julie doesn't know what to say: terrorism? Freedom fighting? Trying to steal her father's weapons and use them for good? "Oh. This and that. A lot of volunteering."

"That sounds relaxing," Sandra says slowly in a way that means it sounds boring. "Have you considered coming back to the circuit? I talked to your father just last week about picking up another racer, making it a three man team rather than the two. I'm sure you're not that rusty, maybe come back for a reunion season," Sandra says it casually, but Julie hears the unspoken questions about why she stopped racing, how could she leave the team, leave Sandra. The woman's heartbreak may have been dulled with time, but Julie can still see it.

Something in Miller changes then, and for a moment Julie thinks that maybe he didn't know she was a racer, maybe he's confused. But no, he did, he knew all about her motorcycle days and before that dirt bike racing thanks to his case on her. 

Miller stretches an arm along the back of the booth, one hand brushing Julie's shoulder. The other hand still in her own laces their fingers together. He says nothing, and without even glancing over she can imagine his face: the thin eyed smile, the smug quirk of his lips he gets when he's judged someone and found them sorely wanting.

"No, I'm staying retired," Julie finds it easier to say than she expected. 

"I just never understood why you left-" Sandra cuts herself off realizing what she's said, the double edged question.   
Miller shifts, rubs a thumb along the strip of skin between Julie's tank top and bra. The gesture is visible but subtle, incredibly familiar, and more than a little possessive. It's also incredibly comforting, so she leans into him.

"Oh, Sandra this is Joe," Julie glances around, feels her face heating and assumes it's the alcohol.

"Sandra Weis," the woman holds out a hand.

Miller smiles tightly, doesn't move his hand, and says simply, "Nice to meet you."

Julie closes her eyes for a moment, torn between the frustration and relief. She doesn't quite have the willpower to tell Sandra to fuck off, she can't be dismissive of someone who mattered so much, but she wants her gone, would claw out of her skin to get away. If she can hold this silence, maybe-

Sandra shifts her weight off the table, "It was good to see you, Julie. You look well," The woman is looking at Miller. 

"You too," Julie says, but Sandra is already gone.

Julie turns into Miller's arms, allows herself a moment to hide her face in his neck and breathe before she sits up and blinks away the threat of tears.

"I thought it was a hiding-from-cops kind of evening, not a hiding-from-..?" Miller asks by omission as he gently removes his hands from hers, waiting for Julie to pull away, to be gone as well.

"From my ex-girlfriend who is now the Razorback Racing team manager?" Julie clarifies, and looks up at him. Her leg at some point was thrown over his knee, his hand on her forearm, their faces close. "Thank you."

"Any time, Julie," Miller pauses and runs a circle on her wrist where their skin meets, obviously weighing his words. "You are doing a lot of good here, kid. Racing's a shit job anyway, good way to end up wrapped around a tree."

Julie snorts, nods, "Thanks. I really should go before anyone else wants to talk."

"She's still watching," Miller says low, without looking away from her face.

"Mind if I..?" Julie cannot look away from his eyes or she won't wait for an answer.

He nods, so subtly, and she thinks that she would have missed it if she hadn't been so close. She wonders if he knows what she was asking, thinks he didn't, doesn't, what the hell, and then kisses him. For a moment she thinks he will pull away in rejection, or anger, or even try to deepen the kiss. She is reminded that she doesn't really know him, can't be sure of his motives, can't trust him… Does anyway. But Miller tips his head slightly, hand on her shoulder, and lets her press and almost chaste kiss to his lips for several seconds too long. When she leans away he holds still, watching her with sharp eyes.

"Gotta go, dear," she says with as much mirth as she can, and stands. Miller smiles or grimaces, but it happens too fast and she's too drunk to be sure.

"Stay safe, kid."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I hate this chapter but here it is because I really don't want to edit and rewrite it for one minute longer. 
> 
> Y'all aren't getting the cream of the crop here, and I apologize for that, but it's kind of a "accept this halfway shitty content or get nothing" situation here so. Enjoy for whatever the hell it's worth. <3


	6. Chapter 6

Miller wakes up with a crick in his neck and the feeling that something must be wrong, but Julie is there, first thing he sees. Not such a bad way to wake up. 

"Hey there," she smiles. "Don't move, okay?"

Miller frowns at that, and realizes something feels wrong with his arm, and almost sits up before he remembers the content of her last words. 

"Arm feels-" He trails off, not sure what it feels.

"Broken? That's because it's broken, Miller. You're fine, there's no immediate danger, and I'd prefer if you not sit up, okay?"

He realizes his head is resting in her lap, which is nice but odd. Also the sunset drenched sky behind her is moving and also somewhere nearby Havelock is swearing in that clipped unemphatic way he does when driving.

"I'm gonna sit up-" he says but Julie presses on his chest gently.

"Joe-"

"I'm gonna sit up," this time he manages it, almost slides off the bench seat in the back of Havelock's car, and throws out an arm to brace himself which hurts because, yep, that's broken.

Miller wants to swear and yell and lash out but a wave of nausea rolls over him and instead he doubles up retching.

"No sure, barf in my car, not like you're not already getting blood all over," Havelock says, and makes a too-sharp left turn leaving Miller half plastered to the door beside him.

Once the g-force from Havelock's driving has faded, and he's caught his breath Julie crowds into his space, pulls him against her so that he is lying down, back to her chest, broken arm folded gently across him, his head resting on her shoulder. 

"Hey asshole, you can slow the car down now that he's conscious," she says, almost shouts. Havelock seems to only mutter in reply, but the engine sounds less manic, less like a monster.

"Not to worry ya, kid, but I uhm. Don't seem to recall how this happened," Miller gestures weakly with his good right arm.

"Does he have fucking amnesia?!" Havelock asks.

"God you're such an asshole," Julie spits back. "No. It's fucking shock. You should know this shit, cop."

Miller touches his chest with his good hand and then taps his fingers together, sticky, "Am I bleeding?"

"Yeah, it's okay, just some cuts and bruises," Julie combs back his hair and Miller thinks this would be really lovely if not for the pain and nausea and confusion.

"Oh, well that's good," he hears himself say, the words dripping sarcasm. He feels Julie laughing against his back.

She stays with him when they get to the hospital. Havelock is moving the car when they finally find a room to call him back to and Julie is the one to help him up. When they ask who she is she says she's his fiancee and looks plausibly concerned and distracted, clings to him, until the nurses leave and she can relax.

"Sorry," she says.

"Nah, 's fine," he tries not to think about the fact that she hasn't let go of his good hand. "What happened?"

"I wanted to ask you that," she says, and he snorts and let's his attention fade.

It takes hours, but they release him that night with his arm in a cast and stitches in his chest for a deep gash. Most of the cuts are on the same side as his broken arm, maybe from the same hit? His bruises are pretty well distributed, though, and he only notices the broken nose when a nurse sets it. He doesn't try hard to remember how any of this happened, just letting it come back slowly, trying to look at the facts as he sees them without extrapolating.

Julie hadn't been with him, neither had Havelock, or they'd know what happened. He'd been injured but not killed. Broken bones but no bullet holes. Late in the evening on his day off. Havelock and Julie, together, and his mind wants to worry at that, and wonder, and theorize. As soon as he has that thought he remembers their venom in the car, and feels his tension ebb, and that's when he realizes he was worried they were what, dating? Socializing? Is he so petty and pitiful that he wants to be the only person in her life, the only- except he's not anything to her, just a contact, just some cop she works with while trying to dismantle the city itself. Well, and they get coffee. Sometimes.

Havelock is driving them to Miller's house, Havelock the functional, the efficient, then one who didn't get his arm broken and lose an afternoon's worth of memory.

Suddenly bitter, Miller sighs, and before the feeling can set as a layer of cement around his heart, before he can harden and shut down, Julie's feather light hand is brushing his shoulder. He didn't open his eyes.

"You're tensing up," she says. "Not good for injuries, Miller. Relax. I'm right here and Havelock is outside, you're safe as houses."

"What does that mean?" He hears himself ask. "Why are houses safe?"

Julie laughs, and it's the best sound in the world right now, and he finally does relax.

When they reach his place Havelock opens the door for Miller and says, "You owe me an explanation once you remember it."

Miller nods, moderately ashamed that while Havelock seems to be furious he's totally unable to remember what he'd done that got them here.

Julie helps him into the house, makes him sit on his sofa and drink a glass of water.

"You hungry?" She asks, already searching through his cupboards. He realizes he is, distantly, but she's already cooking while he goes back over the data.

Broken bones but no bullet holes, because they didn't want him dead, not really. Dawes had wanted to talk, that was it, hard to have a conversation with a man full of bullet holes-

Julie drops a pot and swears quietly, but the noise of cooking resumes.

Late in the afternoon on his day off because it wasn't police business, not really, it was something close though. He had been told to meet someone, Dawes? That felt right.

"I'm making pasta," Julie says. "You should eat something with these pills." 

"I'm not taking the pills," he says absently.

"You are," Julie says, and leans past the kitchen doorway to smile. "At least the antibiotics."

"They gave me antibiotics?"

"Mystery cuts, they worry when you can't remember how you got it. Think you got a tetanus shot too," she was muffled again, behind the wall. 

He stands, half limps across the room to lean in his own kitchen doorway to watch her cook. She has a box of pasta on the counter and water boiling, and it looked like she'd emptied out a can of fire roasted tomatoes into a pot and was just standing there, heating them.

"Julie, uh. Do you know how to cook?" He tries not to sound dubious, and fails.

"Oh course I do, sit down."

"No, really: what do you put on pasta?" He leans against the kitchen counter, ignoring her shooing motions.

"Tomatoes!"

"Ah. You never learned to cook," Miller tries to sound shocked. "I found the thing Julie Mao can't do: make god damn food."

"My cooking is perfectly edible," she glares but seems entertained. 

"But is it delicious? Does it make you want seconds? Do-"

"Edible."

"Move over," Miller says, intent upon cooking something decent.

Julie pokes the back of his hand with a fork, "No, fuck you. Sit down, you can tell me where you keep that Vermont cheddar cheese."

"No," Miller retreats to his undersized dining table on the far end of the kitchen and collapses into a chair. "Absolutely not."

He spends twenty minutes directing her around the kitchen, five of which are spent with her trying to make out his scrawled handwriting on jars of spices. The labels are peeling and yellowed and he doubts any of the herbs have any flavor left, so they add double and hope the labels were even correct. 

"I still like cheese on my spaghetti," she says after they eat. "For all your spices this is just okay."

Miller pouts, looks wounded, "If you wanted me hurt you could have left me on the floor of that warehouse."

"So you remember that," Julie's voice has lost its humor though she is smiling.

He does now, had remembered most of it in flashes and fuzzy moments while they ate. While he pushed around his food and tried to find an appetite Julie had been telling him stories about how she had almost burned her first apartment down after leaving the Razorback team. A small part of Miller's mind had been thinking about how Julie hadn't needed to cook for herself as a kid or even young adult, other people did that for her, poor little rich girl, and that was unfair since she really had proven she was more than that- He'd let that part of his mind babble. Behind that white noise had been memories of a fight, of breaking an arm, the warehouse…

He was going to put a bullet in Kipo and Lida. That was the first thing he knew clearly. He doesn't say it out loud.

Julie is watching him now, handing him some pills, "An antibiotic and ibuprofen. I didn't open the hydrocodine."

"You can have the whole bottle," he says as she drops the medication into his palm. He swallows them dry, then when she blinks at him sips his water. "Give em to the next OPA idiot who gets shot, refuses to go to the hospital. Don't let it be you, though," he tracks on with a glare.

She doesn't ask for an explanation, just pockets a bottle, and he doesn't want to elaborate tonight.

"So, what happened at the wearhouse Joe?" She speaks quietly with an open and guileless face, hands folded passively on the table, posture open, and using his first name like a fucking paring knife. She’s too smart, it’s infuriating. 

What had happened was Anderson fucking Dawes. What had happened had actually started with a seemingly friendly chat last week. 

He had spent the whole prior month filing half-fake reports to Shaddid. He'd written out a story that bought him time and led away from Julie, saying there was evidence she'd been lured into an extremist group by some guy she was dating, the cultish Inaros group, and that her boyfriend was brainwashing her. The research had been loose and the documentation believably sub par and thus impossible to verify. His story had been that he had been pulling data and searching for Julie with no luck, but was looking into the Inaros group in general. It was a complete red herring. In reality he'd been using those resources to try and determine who Jules Pierre Mao had hired, how many groups were looking for Julie, and whom the fuck at Star Helix had been involved in directing this kidnap job to Miller's desk. Julie still hadn’t gotten back to him about whatever was on that damn cell phone she’d taken off the thugs. 

On Monday he got a mystery text that had read simply, "Julie's parents are getting close to finding her without you."

Miller hadn't known the number, but he'd recognized that it wasn't useful information, not really. It was meant to get his attention. Miller had replied with a question mark. 

The next text had been a time and the address of the coffee shop where he'd first talked to Julie, first told her about her parents and the kidnap job and she'd given him her number. He didn't think that was a coincidence, not by a long shot, so he'd shown up as asked but planned a little. Havelock was pissed at him this week, for not backing the younger detective up on some bullshit with their boss, so he wasn't an option. Miller had called Muss instead, feigning car trouble, and asked if he could get a lift home from the coffee shop in an hour. At least if something went wrong she'd know he'd gone missing, and when, and where. She was still predictably soft on him, even years after she’d left him, and while he didn’t like manipulating Muss’s emotions, he could trust she cared.   
Normally he would have called Julie to watch his back, but obviously that wouldn’t work this time. Luckily when he arrived it had been Dawes at the coffee shop, ostensibly alone, with a smile.

"Detective Miller," and the man's accent had been so thick Miller had almost cringed. "I think that it is long past time we met, Detective."

"Anderson Dawes," Miller didn't know the man, but knew the voice, had overheard the thick stuffy drawl on Julie's phone before. "I'm not here for socializing."

"No, you are here for Julie Mao," Dawes had sounded friendly, pleasant. Miller had kept his mouth shut and tried not to hit the guy.

They'd danced around it for a few minutes, but eventually Dawes got to the point: he knew that Star Helix had an off-the-record case looking for the kidnapping of Julie Mao, and he had guessed that Miller had been assigned the kidnap job. Miller didn't deny it.

"What I cannot figure," Daws had said slowly, "Is why you are dragging out this case. I do not think you believe in our cause. Maybe you have developed a soft spot for Miss Mao, eh?"

"The fuck do you know about it, sabaka?" Miller spat, and Dawes had looked surprised before laughing. Miller almost never used the Lang Belta pidgin of his youth outside of interrogations, but found his capacity for rattling off profanities remained undiminished. He had sworn quietly at Dawes, just for the pleasure of it, but the man hadn’t flinched. 

"What I wonder is what exactly Julie would think. If she found out why exactly you were looking for her," Dawes said, and Miller had bit his tongue to stay silent. He had assumed that Julie had talked to Dawes about the kidnap job, but Dawes lack of understanding seemed to suggest otherwise. Dawes had thought he had something to hold over Miller, some piece of blackmail, which meant Julie hadn't told Dawes anything. He hadn't been sure what that meant in the moment but also didn't want to reveal his hand.

Miller had walked away from the cafe then, allowing Dawes to draw whatever the hell conclusions he wanted, and texted Muss to tell her he'd gotten the car started and no need for the ride. She’d tried to call him, but he had sent it to voicemail and driven home in silence, thinking. 

Six days later his Inaros research requests were transferred to his department email along with all the data he could request on Jules Pierre Mao without a warrant. Separately his requests for intra-department call logs on Shaddid had finally returned, a favor he’d asked Muss for. He’d thanked her via email, without returning any of the three phone calls she’d made to him that week. He'd wanted details on who she'd gotten the kidnap job from, whom it was on the food chain that was in Jules Pierre's pocket. Instead he'd seen a string of burner phone lines and email addresses. He had still been trying to piece what that meant together when Shaddid had chewed him out for asking for data from IT on Jules Pierre Mao and sent him home with a blue streak practically burning the air behind him.

On the way home from work Kaipo had thrown a bag over Miller's head while his sister jammed a tazer into his ribs. That was when it had clicked: his tech data had said that Jules Pierre hadn't contacted anyone suspicious, but Shaddid had. Who did he know that lived on mystery and burner cell phones?

In his now Julie is waiting for an answer as to what he remembers, is watching him push cold pasta around, and he knows he trusts her with his life but doesn't know if that's more suicidal ideation.

"I remember getting jumped," he hedges, because it's not untrue. Julie looks unimpressed. "It's still a little fuzzy, but it’s coming back. Could I get more water?" He holds up his glass with a sheepish half smile.

Julie stands and refills the glass and Miller closes his eyes for the moment, tries to think of what to tell her happened next.

Because when he had come-to after being tazed, Dawes had been the one standing over him, Kaipo and Lida looking grim next to him, and Kaipo had opened the conversation by breaking his nose. 

"I thought I was relatively clear during our last conversation," Dawes had said some time later, after sending the wonder twins away, presumably to patrol whatever shady abandoned warehouse they had dragged him to. 

"You know, maybe I was the one who wasn’t clear enough," Miller had spat blood, considered what he had to lose, and then had thought of Julie working for this asshole. He had shrugged apologetically as he spoke but said it anyway, "I walked away from you when I should have told ya to go fuck yourself."

The beating had been predictable. It had taken Miller a few minutes to figure out what Dawes had wanted, until Dawes was wiping his knuckles clean on Miller's shirt, the prick.

"You're not aiming for data," Miller had coughed and spat blood during that pause in the violence, watched Dawes sit back. "This isn't interrogation, it's intimidation, meant to scare me off. You don't want something from me, ya want me to stop something. Stop what?"

Dawes had been silent, the hash industrial lighting leaving him half in shadow. Miller remembered that. Even in the moment Miller had known he was talking himself through it, working out the details, not really talking to Dawes.

Miller had been looking into Mao senior, but he was certain that his Star Helix resources hadn't found anything that wasn't readily available to the general public so that wasn't the issue. He had lied about Inaros being involved with Julie, but from what he knew of Inaros if he had hit anywhere near a mark he'd be dead. He'd looked into Shaddid-

Miller felt his whole body jerk knowing that was the connection. Julie hadn't said a word to Dawes about Miller's investigation, he was sure because Dawes wasn't aware that Miller had been upfront with Julie about the Helix case telling him to kidnap her. The only other people it could have been were Shaddid and Mao himself. 

"I don't get it," Miller had mused, wiped blood from his lip, straightened his shirt. "You don't want Julie shipped off to her folks, but you don't want me involved either. If you're trying to scare me away from Julie, if this is some macho bullshit-"

Dawes had sworn, then laughed, then sat down abruptly, “You were right, detective. I had hoped to convince you to stay away from Julie, but I now realize that will not work.”  
“I could’a told you that,” Miller’s temple throbbed. "Why?"   
“You’re in love with her,” Dawes sighed.   
Miller paused, touched his temple, then nodded, “Yeah.” 

The moment Dawes blinked, seemingly surprised at Miller’s casual agreement, the detective launched himself forward while swinging wildly. Miller landed a few good hits before Kaipo and Lida pulled him off and his memory still can't piece together what happened next. There was Kaipo and Lida dragging him, opening the trunk of a car, then Miller had looked down and grabbed the crowbar from the trunk and swung. Lida had wrenched it from his weak grip and broken his arm with it.

Dawes had been standing over him before the trunk closed, saying something, "I had hoped to let you live, Detective. Julie likes you." He hadn't looked angry, just disappointed. Miller hated the expression on the man's face.

"Fuck you," Miller had slurred, glared, and then it had been dark. 

The car hadn't started, there was talking, and Miller quietly struggled, trying to first find a tail light, then kick it loose without actually making noise. He was tired, bruised all over, the bones of his arm had been replaced with a hot iron poker, and his head was fuzzy. Everything was taking longer to do, and he kept having to remind himself of his goal. He'd managed to get the light to wiggle when he heard a growl, a small engine, a motorcycle approaching? 

It had to be Julie, she still buzzed all over town on a shitty Honda and… Well, Joe closed his eyes and decided it simply HAD to be Julie.

The voices around him had been silent for longer than he could remember, but at the sound of the motorcycle he heard Dawes speak again. 

"Fuck," the man said conversationally.

"We off him now bosmang?" That had been Kipo, and Miller had kicked at the tail light viciously and suddenly. "Too late," Dawes replied. "We leave, now, she won't come after us with him hurt."

The trunk had opened, and Miller had blinked up at bright white for a moment, Dawes just a blurry silhouette. The man had just said they weren't going to kill him, and yet here he was, helpless, gasping in pain. It hadn't seemed like the kind of thing he was going to walk away from.

"She won't believe him if he tells her," Dawes was smiling down at him. 

Miller had tried to reach up to grab Dawes, but the larger man had simply pulled him from the car, easily lifted Miller's too thin form, and shook him. Sounds seemed clearer, for those moments, everything more intense and immediate. He remembered the words-

"Julie Mao saves your life yet again, eh Detective? Tell her the truth for me, ya? She will not love you for it."

Then Dawes had dropped him to the cement floor, and unthinking Miller had tried to catch his weight onto the broken arm, and then Miller thought he probably screamed. 

He could just barely remember Julie finding him, asking him who the hell had done this, telling him to stay awake, literally had to bite his tongue not to laugh when she asked if whoever hurt him might come back. Not if they want to keep you on the payroll, he thought. Miller remembers her swearing when she realized she couldn't get him to the hospital on a motorcycle, remembers handing off her phone, her calling someone, then nothing.

So now Joe pushes pasta through only moderately bitter red sauce and decides he is most definitely going to lie.

"I don't want you involved," he says.

She looks pissed, as expected.

"I am involved Joe." 

"It's about an open case, smuggling," he's ad libing now, hoping his clever stupid tongue comes up with something convincing. This lie doesn't need to be the good one, this first lie is the cover so that when he confesses it was untrue and tells the second lie she won't catch it.

"Smuggling?"

"They wanted to get a dirty cop, a contact they could buy," Miller hears himself speaking, spooling out a bad lie, full of holes: why'd they let him live, where'd they go, how'd he get lured out to nowhere without backup? 

Julie looks thoughtful, forgiving, nods at all the right times. She's an excellent actress, which worries Miller terribly since he's beginning to suspect he won't know if she buys the second lie. 

She speaks evenly, "Do you know why I was there? I got a tip. Someone fucking called me, says 'Your boyfriend is trying to get shot,' and then they rattle off an address that I was lucky to even remember. Who called me?"

Maybe he wasn't going to kill Kaipo and Lida. Maybe. Miller shrugs again with one good hand, "Don't know. Maybe someone trying to lure you there? But then why leave before you showed." He answers his own question, doesn't try to have a real explanation, and hopes that sells the lie a little more.

Julie shakes her head, but not at him he thinks, just at the situation. For now she is silent, and he helps her clean up, bites his tongue while she insists on doing dishes since he doesn't have more than the two plates, while she boxes a single serving of leftovers into the faded plastic of the cottage cheese containers he uses as tupperware, slides it into a fridge with too many bottles and not enough actual food. For a moment he is grateful for the lie which he can almost feel between his molars still: it keeps him from feeling the embarrassment of the fact that Julie has a clear view of his only half-functional life.

Miller waits, comes up with a better lie, stalls until the moment is all wrong and therefore most right. 

Julie is smiling as she washes the plates. He tries to object, but she laughs.

"You have a broken arm, Joe. Let me make this place a little more livable while I'm here with two functional hands," she wiggles all ten fingers at him like she's showing off the fact that she can.

Miller uses the time to boil water, a task he manages just fine with one hand thank you, and discovers all he has is a few holey bags of black tea in the bottom of a dusty box. He uses his teeth and good hand to open the packaging and tears the paper labels off to drop whole teabags into the pan of boiling water. It makes two very weak mugs of orangeish tea.

Julie fills her mug with too much sugar, turns on his stereo, sits on the couch with him. It would be nice, relaxing, if Miller hadn't been through the ringer today. If his blood itself didn't ache with exhaustion. He tries not to relax, but it's hard. Julie seems to be trying to get him to fall asleep, telling a funny and pointless story from the community garden, talking low, laughing. Miller's muscles unwind and he almost spills his tea, but catches himself.

"Thanks kid," he says as she takes the mug from him, and when their hands touch, when she wastes that one millisecond looking at his lips, he sighs and knows that's his moment. What a waste.

He wants to tell her the truth. He wants to kiss her. But he's not a moron, even when in this much pain, so he does neither. 

"Julie, I'm sorry, I can't-" he tries not to let himself get caught up in an apology, knowing both that acting guilt ridden won't work on her and that he'd only be stalling. "I lied to you, I'm sorry. It was reflexive, a dumb attempt to be protective, but that's no excuse. I just didn't want you getting involved. It wasn't some damn smuggling ring."

Julie sets his mug down on the side tablemm, face impassive. She does not look hurt, she's not that good an actress, thank god.

"It was about you. The kidnap job. Some mercs working for your family, I think, wanted to be sure I didn't get to you before they did. Think they just wanted to scare me," Miller shrugs with one hand, trying not to move his shoulders. "They asked a lot about you, I played dumb. Told them the same shit I told Shaddid, that you were hard to find, that Inaros had you brain washed. Think I sold them on the lie… I might have strongly implied you were a poverty-tourist and a bimbo, and I didn't think you'd be found alive."

"The phone call really was a lure..."

"Probably," Joe nods. It is increasingly difficult to not tell her more, every lie is easier to say and harder to maintain. "I was intentionally obtuse, they probably got your number off my phone."

"Why didn't they attack me when I came to get you?"

"I don't know. After the broken arm I wasn't hearing much," the words come easy to Miller because that much is true.

Julie nods, doesn't look upset or surprised at this new confession. "I'm so tired of all this… I just wish my father would give up. Thank you for telling me, Miller," Julie says, her hand once more on his good arm, just a suggestion of comfort. He doesn't want to risk speaking so just nods again.

Miller doesn't feel guilt over this, he absolutely refuses to. Knowing that it was Dawes who almost killed him won't make Julie safer, thinking Dawes wasn't involved won't make her life any more dangerous, but believing that her father has creepy goons searching for her that might be willing to rough up a cop? It won't make her less cautious, that's for damn sure. 

Julie stares into the middle distance for a minute, then gathers the tea cups, leaves them in his kitchen sink, and shrugs on her coat. She lingers by his front door, and Miller doesn't move.

"Since we're being candid, I finally got into that cell phone," Julie's voice is flat. She's looking at the doorknob rather than him. "Not much data, just phone calls back and forth between some Southern California area codes, a few texts. 'Meet at Frankie's 5pm' that kinda shit. And a voicemail still on the drive. Warning them to get results by July, or else."

Miller blinks, "Wonder what happens in July."

Julie shrugs, just the hands, mimicking his earlier movements, then os gone.

A minute or hour later Miller stumbles into the bedroom, doesn't bother turning off the lights or stereo, just teeters to the mattress and tries to lay down. It takes a few minutes of trying to unfold his sore limbs and cramped muscles, and he spends the time watching the ceiling thinking that he should have a healed arm by June. That only gives him a few weeks to try to regain muscle mass in that arm, remember how to shoot with it, before whatever happens in July.

He falls asleep weighing the difficulty of convincing Julie to leave town versus the difficulty of hunting down and killing her father, and which will keep her safer, and which would make her hate him more.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Haha holy shit this chapter is too long and I agonized over it WAY more than was needed. 
> 
> The plot bug bit me and I felt like I had so much I wanted this chapter to do, most of which it just, uh, doesn't. 
> 
> Anyway, just a few more chapters after this!


	7. Chapter 7

"Hey," he speaks low at the intercom. "It's me, let me in. I brought beer."

There was a long pause before he heard Julie's voice, "What, are you in a rush Miller? Is it cold out there?"

He snorts, then punches the button again, "Yeah, and also your neighbors don't really like your cop friend hanging out in the halls very much, so how about ya let me in."

There was a delay before she buzzed him up, but within seconds he was in the building, skipping steps up two flights of stairs, and about to knock on her door. He rushes so that he won't reconsider having brought Thai food in addition to the beer and painkillers. He won't wonder why it was him that she called asking for company.

Julie answers the door before he can actually knock and looks up at him sullenly through dark eyelashes and over a black eye.

"Jesus Christ, kid," Miller sets the plastic bags on the floor, well less 'sets' and more 'drops', and has his hands up hovering next to her cheeks within seconds. Julie lets the door swing close behind him while he tilts her face left and right in the dim light. "That looks painful. Is your nose broken too?"

His thumb brushes the bridge of her nose before she can answer and he cringes at the mistake. Julie takes his hands in her own and pulls them away from her face, and he’s sure she sees the scrapes on his own knuckles, the scratches above his elbow. It’s not like a little blood wasn’t par for the course for them both.

"No, nothing broken. Just the black eye, and some scrapes. Some stitches," she smiles.

He feels his eyebrows raise at the word stitches, and Julie rolls her own eyes. She steps back then gingerly strips off her sweatshirt and peels up her tank top to reveal a gauze pad on her ribs, then holds her fingers apart next to it as an impromptu measurement. 

"Just a slice, about four centimeters. If I hadn't been going in to get checked for cracked ribs already I would have just used butterfly bandages on it. It’s not the worst I’ve ever had, Joe."

"Fuck," his hand is hovering, he wanted to touch her again, but he holds back. His eyes scan her hips, arms, collar, all of which bear mottled half-black bruising. It’s inconsistent and uneven, tells a tale of her taking hits in places they hadn't originally been aimed. She hadn't been beaten up, it had been a matched fight. He hoped she'd put the other guy in the fucking hospital. 

"You were right," she snatches up her sweatshirt again and tugs it on to hide the damage. "The OPA hadn’t done enough research, that or maybe someone just got jumpy. I don’t know. It was one of the Golden Bough guys, I think, he pulled out a knife trying to look tough while our contact was still making the deal, my agent had just set the briefcase down, he didn’t have time to fight- I had to knock out two guys to get to him and by then, it was...”

Miller remembers a John Doe from a few days back, “Your OPA contact is now my stab victim in getting cold on the slab, huh?” 

She was so beautiful when she glared.

When he had talked to her about Dawes last she'd been furious, but mostly at Miller. Julie had accused him of being jealous, overprotective, paranoid. She'd been right, but so had he: Miller had accused Dawes of being unscrupulous and fanatical, and he had the dead OPA agents in his fucking morgue to prove it. 

He hadn't told her about Dawes being responsible for his broken arm.

Julie and Miller had shouted and sworn, and even in the moment he had been grateful that Julie gave enough of a fuck that she wanted to argue about it. That she didn't just lie to him with an agreement and blow him off, or kick his ass and physically throw him out. All he had wanted was for her to ask Dawes what the backup plan was for this mysterious intel meeting. Miller told her he was sure there wasn't one, and that she was worth ten of Dawes, and if he didn't have a safe plan the OPA leader should go to this intel meeting his own fucking self since it would be less of a loss...

"So you brought beer?" She interrupts his thought.

"And pain killers. Though, I don't think you're supposed to drink and take tylenol actually," Miller pulls a pill bottle from the pocket of his coat and squints at it.

"That's not beer," Julie points at one of the two bags.

"That's, uh, Thai food," he drops the bottle back into his pocket and tries not to fidget. "Was worried you might not have been up to feeding yourself. Have you eaten?"

"No," Julie says. She doesn’t thank him or look at him, just starts setting the table for two. 

He picks up the bags to rest on the chipped formica of her kitchen table and starts opening boxes of Pad Thai and rice and green curry. He doesn’t look at her. The last time he’d brought food over it had been a congratulatory pizza and hard cider, his idea of a friendly way to show he was glad her broken leg had healed up finally. Julie had been a walking series of injuries for months at that point, ever since Dawes realized she could really fight, and when Miller had said something to that effect while handing her a hard cider she had pulled him in by the collar and kissed him to shut him up.

It hadn't been the first time she'd kissed him, but it had been the first time sober, the first time she'd kissed him just to kiss him. He’d been so surprised that Julie had gotten two steps away before he reeled her back in, pinned her to the counter, and kissed her senseless. His memory of that day was fuzzy, but he remembered they hadn’t made it to the bedroom that first time, hadn’t even made it off the kitchen counter. He'd taken her right there, cracked his knee on a drawer handle, and she'd kicked an apple off the counter, and that by the time they’d had enough of each other the pizza had been cold. Well, he assumed it had been cold, she had gently thrown him out despite her smile, like he'd been a mistake. Miller didn't consider a walk of shame particularly shameful, but that one did ache a little.

Miller brushes the memory aside and looks at Julie now. When she meets his eye he holds up a beer in question. She nods and he opens two bottles and sets them across the table from one another.

They sit and eat in silence, Julie occasionally slowing down to glare at a fixed point in space with her fork suspended in midair before returning to the moment and taking her next bite. Miller nurses his beer, trying not to comment on Julie barely drinking and seeming deeply distracted. She needs something, he knows, or she wouldn't have called. But what he couldn't yet tell. Maybe just to talk to someone about Dawes and the dead agent? Maybe she'd intended to be angry at him, blame Miller for having been right. Maybe she didn't know what she needed yet. Eventually he had to ask.

"I know you're okay but, ah. Are you alright?" He asks it as casually as he's able, but he could tell he'd done a bad job immediately.

"Give me the pain killers," she slurps down a long slice of carrot then sets her fork aside to hold out a hand. 

Miller pulls out the bottle and sets it on the table between himself and his bowl of noodles, close to his chest. He considers. 

"What, do you really think getting into a fight some idiot goons is gonna leave me fucked up?" She lowers her hand.

"Absolutely not, but I think having an agent die..." The words trail off, and he slides the bottle toward her.

Julie shakes out two yellow-and-red pills and washes them down with a sip of beer. She hands the bottle back.

"How's Havelock?" She asks, probably trying to throw him off.

"He's fine, just fine. Recovering well," Miller lies, maybe. 

He doesn't know much, knows the man was alive, out of the ICU. Miller had gone to see him, once, and they'd fought. About Julie, of course, about how Miller had lied to Havelock, had said the girl was an informant, had prevented her arrest with some hand waving and bullshit. Havelock had been pissed when he found that out, more pissed when Miller wouldn't give him the details about how he ended up with a broken arm bleeding in the back of a car.

Julie is eating green curry straight out of the paper box, watching him think.

"Sorry. Lot on my mind. So no broken ribs, right?" Miller stops pretending to eat and just drinks his beer. She's quiet and it makes him nervous that he'd say something wrong or stupid. 

"No, no broken ribs."

"Is Dawes working with the new data you got?"

"Definitely," Julie nodded. And there is is, he must have said the wrong thing, because she is sealing up the to-go containers. Miller stands quickly, starts transferring the boxes to her tiny refrigerator,piles the bowls in the sink. 

"Sit, sit. You're a fucking Picasso of bruises, kid, you deserve some rest," he mutters the words expecting her to object, but she nods, colapses into her sofa. Miller dries his hands, preparing himself to leave.

"Would you make us some tea?" She is sitting sideways to look over the sofa and face him in the kitchen. 

Us, she had said. Make us.

The second time they’d slept together, Julie had just shown up at his house, late, drunk and with bloody knuckles. He’d made her tea, then sat on his patio and drank it with her when she wouldn’t come inside. Eventually he managed to convince her to come in, after she’d sobered up and was just angry and punch-drunk instead of really drunk. No sooner had he shut the door than she was peeling out of her clothing, walking into his bedroom like it was her personal domain. Like she belonged here. He supposed it was, she did: she’d been the first and only woman in there in at least a year. 

"Sure, tea," he can't say it fast enough. Then, after a pause, "Uh. Where do you keep your tea? And a pot, I guess."

Julie directs him around her kitchen, laughs when he opens the wrong cupboard and has a box of pasta fall into his face, and eventually he has two cups of chai tea to juggle. He makes it to the sofa and hands one over to Julie, then promptly spills his own when her fingers brush his wrist. He hisses a bit, swears, and licks a drop of near-boiling tea from the back of his hand.

"You are terribly uncoordinated," Julie observes.

"Thanks."

She's looking at him over her tea like it really had been a compliment.

"Kid, why'd you call me?" He watched the steam swirl from her cup.

"Thai food and under sweetened tea."

"I just thought… Don’t you want to call someone who knows you better? Or someone else in the OPA?" Miller says, and she looks over her cup, eyes half hidden in the mist.

She'd looked like that, behind a curtain of steam, half serious and totally inscrutable, the last time she'd kissed him, when he'd run. When some part of him with a sense of self-preservation had seen her in a towel and freshly showered and had said ‘get out’ and ‘you can’t keep doing this’ and ‘she doesn’t know.’ Now the memory of her casual come-on and his refusal almost made him want to bolt out the front door all over again. 

"There's no one else I would call, Joe," Julie takes his tea from him and sets it on the table. At some point she'd set her own aside as well.

"Julie-"

"And I missed you," she's closer now, tucking her hair behind her ear in a coy impression of a thousand beautiful starlets, only slightly marred by her bruised cheek. 

His mind reminds him, 'She doesn't know-.'

"Don't do this tonight," he starts to stand but she casually throws an arm in front of him, and the bruises make him pause, make him worry that he could hurt her if he brushes her off. It gives her long enough to stand upright as he does and to crowd into his space despite being a foot shorter than him.

"Why not Joe?" She gets between him and the door while he glances around for his hat, and when he meets her eyes he also sees her set jaw and glare of determination. 

"Fuck Julie, because-”   
“You like me,” she interrupts. "So why not?"

He thinks, 'She doesn't know that you're in-'  
Miller tries to keep talking, slowly, looking for the points over her shoulder, “Because you're twenty eight and take on guys who could kill people without blinking-”

“And we have fun together,” she steps toward him. "Why not?"

And it's too tempting so he crowds right back into her space without thinking about it, just to be close to her, just to be able to smell a whiff of her hair. He is aware his voice is quieter than it should be, that he isn't trying very hard to convince her any longer.

“Because you're going to save the fucking world, because. Shit. I don't know, Julie, I don't. I just know it's a terrible idea-" he is losing this argument, he can feel it. “Because we can’t just keep pretending that- Because I can't pretend- Because you'll-” 

"Because I'll break your heart," she says like it was obvious. 

That makes him pause, makes him drop his hat back on the table and sigh.

'She knows you're in love.'

"Yeah," the admission sounded pitiful to his own ears. She'd figured it out before he had. "Yeah, because you'll break my heart kid."

Julie is standing with her arms crossed, barefoot, in her kitchen with the sunset light hitting her black eye and a look that says she wants to kick his ass a little. He'd let her. She probably could even if he didn't let her. She really was gorgeous angry.

"That's a shitty cowardly excuse, Joe."

Well that hurt, for all that it was fair. But it also means she knows he isn’t talking about staying the night. That’s not the conversation they were having any longer, it wasn’t about tonight, or not just tonight. She's not asking for a quick fuck on a kitchen counter, or in her shower, it's literally in her choice of word: stay.

For how long?

"What can I say, I'm a shitty-"

She cuts him off, "No you're not, no you fucking aren't, don't say it. Don't pretend this is just your nature and you have no choice."

This isn't about sex, Miller wishes it was. God, that would be simpler. 

"So what, I stay and we play house tonight and pretend that we're not both going to risk our lives on opposite sides of a fight tomorrow? We pretend to be normal folks, nine-to-five and a white picket fence? Or worse, we keep on pretending to be friends who just so happen to fuck, just so happen to fall in and out of bed, but stay over, and care about each other? Because I know you can do that, but I can't Julie," He sounds bitter and dry even to himself. 

"No. Maybe. I don't know." 

Miller sighs and sits back down on the sofa. He can offer her that, an invitation to talk about it, at the very least. Since part of him was already resigned to her talking this all out and destroying whatever this fragile thing they had.

Julie sat.

"You know me better than I know you," She sounds like she just realized that.

"Sure, I was paid to track you down so I guess that makes sense. Which is also a good reason for you to run like-" 

"I like you, Joe, and I want to get to know you better, not just to sleep with you. I want to know more than your favorite beer and that you hate my super sweet coffee and that you're a food snob."

He can hear how much she wants to make this a joke, and he tries to play along, "Well first off I'm not a food snob, you just can't cook."

"You are, but I want to know more shit like that Joe. Stay the night," She smiles and he is distracted and she is suddenly sitting half in his lap.

The words, the casual touch, it all feels like a million tons of steel just below his ribs. She can just decide what she wants, like it was an actual decision, like she could just say it and knows it's true. And for her, he supposes, it is. She can just walk open-eyed into the mire he's been struggling to even see that he was trapped in for the last half a year. She walked right in and decided what she wanted and told him. On the other hand he couldn't even say when he'd fallen for her, hadn't wanted to admit it, hadn't let himself even think it until she'd said it herself.

And this is Julie. If she's decided she wants something there probably isn't much he or anyone else can do to dissuade her. 

He notices that the sun set while they were being dramatic and ridiculous and while he was fighting for the last scraps of his dignity. When Julie touches his cheek he can just barely see her, just see the glow of her skin and the dark of her hair. His hands feel useless and clumsy, but he brushes her cheek as well, traces fingers under her black eye and along her lips.

"Julie, what you're asking for- I'm not like you. I can’t just keep this, keep us, casual. And I don't have a place in this bright future you're fighting for, kid. I'm not sure I even believe in it," he can't find the exact right words: some part of him keeps that shroud of self preservation around his core, won't let him say that he's terrified. But she knows, of course.

"What exactly are you scared of?" Julie runs a hand just under his collar, runs a thumb along a scar he has tried to keep hidden from her. 

She'd gotten him that scar, or he'd gotten it for her, just after his arm had finished healing. 

"You're not scared of hurt," She has one hand on his cheek and the other on his heart, and honestly what's the point in lying?

"It's you," he says, has to swallow not to say more.

"Oh," Julie paused for a moment, trailing her hand from his chest to collar to the nape of his neck, distracting Miller enough that he doesn't even realize his traitor hands are holding onto her, fingers hooked behind one of her knees. "No, not of me. You're afraid of losing me."

Miller doesn't reply, can't say anything in the face of being known so easily by her. His thumb is tracing slow circles around a bone on her inner knee. 

"Oh, Joe," and she kisses him and this time he can't run away. If he'd been able to pay any attention he might have noticed how slowly she moved like he was a wild thing about to startle. He might have noticed how she smiled against his lips, and how her fingertips pressed firmly against the back of his neck to anchor him, but it was Julie so all he is aware of is that it was perfect like every time she’s ever kissed him. 

"This is a terrible idea," he whispers, thinking she won't understand why a kiss is a bad idea, she'll laugh about it. "I won't be what you want or expect-"

"I expect you," she holds his hand, runs a thumb along his knuckles. "I want you."

"Julie..." He doesn't know what to say, can't quite find the right words other than just, "You know I'm in love with you, right?"

Her grip doesn't waiver, she just says, "I know. I’ve known," then pulls him to his feet and leads him to her bed.  
He peels off her shirt, kisses his way up her ribs, past the stitches hidden by gauze and medical tape, and ends up kneeling on the floor to help her strip out of the rest of her clothing. Miller pauses on the floor, kisses one of her knees, and looks up. 

“If I stay tonight,” he considers the words. “I’m not leaving. Not in a few hours, not in the morning. I’m going to make you breakfast and bring you painkillers and coffee, and linger. You won't be able to kick me out again, Julie. You sure you want me haunting your apartment like some old ghost?” 

"Yes, to all of that," Julie leans down and kisses him, all acceptance and understanding. She somehow pulls him into her bed while unbuttoning his shirt, then says, “I don’t know you as well as you know me, Joe, but I think I might be just a little in love with you.”

Miller crawls after her into her bed on hands and knees.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was supposed to be a one-shot songfic composed of just this chapter, so you know. This whole dang story is just an album by The National playing on a loop behind my temple.
> 
> Which is why the cadence of this chapter is a little different than the others. :/ I killed as many darlings as I could, but this chapter probably still feels like it's got goofy pacing. I refuse to rewrite this again.
> 
> Anyway, yeah, few more chapters maybe? I realize I skipped the kinky tender sexy parts of this relationship by referencing that all as having happened between chs 6 and 7. I apologize to those of you who were looking forward to that! Shame on me. I've got slightly more sex in a later chapter, I'll get that uploaded uuuuuuheventually? 
> 
> AS ALWAYS, crits/comments/corrections are appreciated and I adore you all for reading!


	8. Chapter 8

She wakes up because her arm has gone numb and rolls over to realize this is not her bed. 

Joe is asleep, facing away on his side, the uneven scars on his neck barely visible in the dim light. Julie breathes, and thinks idly about running her fingers along those lines. Thinks idly about leaving without a sound. 

Miller had warned her that if she let him in, let him stay, he would haunt her life. And he had. That first night, the next morning, for about 32 hours he had woven himself into her life effortlessly. She had wasted whole weekends with lovers in the past but normally it was just a blur of sex and naps and junk food. Not making dinner together and listening to albums on her living room floor and talking about books. In the past it had been escapism, not real life. Miller had made love to her, sure, but it was the casual domesticity outside of the bedroom that had surprised her that first weekend. It wasn't until he left for work on the following Monday, until she pressed a casual kiss to his jaw and closed the door, that she felt a little frightened of how easy it was.

He'd gone home and she hadn't called him for two weeks. She'd spent the time at first ignoring the question of whether or not she had enjoyed the ease with which he slid into her life, then later frustrated at herself since he had warned her that her casual request would change everything. For two weeks she missed him, missed his quiet humor and soft hands and sad eyes, but didn't know if she regretted the change in their relationship.

Then she'd spent two days on a stakeout of the governor's assistant, sleeping in shifts in a tiny van, sweaty and stinking and miserable. After returning to her apartment empty handed and showering and sleeping (and throwing away the leftovers in her refrigerator) she sat on the sofa and hated the sterility of her house. She just wanted to feel for one minute like she was where she was wanted, welcome, safe.

He had been at her door within an hour of her call, had made her some kind of pasta dish with an Italian name ("With cheese, your favorite," he had deadpanned and she'd rolled her eyes), and stayed the whole weekend. They ate and slept and shopped for groceries and bathed. Before that weekend she hadn't actually ever had anyone wash her hair for her, not like that, not like she was something precious and-

Julie stares at the ceiling now. Her palms and feet tingle with phantom sensations in the dark of Joe's bedroom, memories of running and fighting and doing things, something, anything but stay in bed.

It had been months since then, and there was a toothbrush for him at her apartment. A space in her closet. It wasn't like she saw her own apartment as a home, it was easy enough to share the space if it wasn't hers.

But she had justified never staying over at his place to herself, even though he never asked for an explanation. He has work, she has work plus occasionally some rebellion or treason, it's a lot to juggle. But more than that she can't see herself in his house any more than she can see herself in the mansions of her childhood. She feels like an intruder, like a visitor, a spy. A tourist gawping slack jawed at the wonder that is "home." 

The ceiling above her gazes back down, one long crack running it's length, plastered over but still visible. It adds character to the house, she thinks, this ceiling.

After the second weekend together Julie had seen him out the door and retreated to take a hot shower with a cold beer and intentionally thought about their situation. Their relationship.

And once her inner voice had thought that word, the world seemed to shift and click into place and: there. That's what he had warned her, that's what staying the night and weekend had meant, that's what she hadn't recognized. That's where the comfort came from, the casual touches, the non-sexual intimacy that Julie had been blindsided by. The feeling of home.

She had finished her beer and came to the almost sour conclusion that this only surprised her because she didn't actually have very many relationships to look back on. But Miller did. Miller hadn't been a rich idiot playgirl like she had in her youth, well- Alright, he probably had been something similar, she wasn't blind to his faults or his looks. But age did him a favor, he'd had longer than her, had probably been in more serious relationships than her. For once she felt very young, and inexperienced, and more than a little frustrated by both those things. That feeling had lingered, was still with her now.

Julie listens to their breath now, his slowing for a moment. Joe can move in his sleep, can shift and roll and stretch, without waking. Julie cannot, she must wake to move, and also wakes from every toss and turn of the man beside her. Another complication of sharing a bed.

Like he'd heard these thoughts, Joe shifts, snores once, sighs. Charming.

Julie wants to stay still here, thinks about how much she wants to go back to sleep, but her legs ache and her palms outright itch now. She slips from bed silently, does not flinch at the cold wooden floor on her bare feet, pads out of the bedroom and rubs her palms together. She drinks cold water from her cupped hands at the kitchen sink. The moonlight paints harsh blocks of shadow on the back yard, the anemic shrubs below the fence line are reduced to a high-contrast tangle of branches. Like hair. Like claws. She pads to the bathroom, closes the door but still leaves the light off while she pees, then washes up quietly and slips back into the bedroom to lie down beside Joe.

Julie ignores the cracked ceiling, watches the stars outside the window and thinks of the morning. He will be surprised that she's still there. He will be kind, gracious, fumbling, and sweet. He always is. He will make coffee, try to make breakfast, try to make her feel welcome, and she will be charmed and amused. Julie will sit at the bar of his kitchen barefooted and in his tee shirt and her own underwear, and she will be able to see his affection, the daydreams behind his eyes of a hundred more mornings like this.

Once she would have fled from the promise of such open affection. It wasn't something she'd seen a lot of, growing up, wasn't something she was comfortable with. She suspects Miller was not a natural to it either, though, which does make the thought of being so vulnerable less terrifying, makes it something they were both working at for each other. He's so much better at this than her, has had more time to learn this as well, to learn how to be comfortable in another person's life and house and heart.

Julie imagines waking up to Joe Miller every morning, imagines coffee and breakfast, and then a nine-to-five job, five days a week, vacations once a year. The thought is unbearable. So she imagines never waking up next to him again, no little snores, no ghosting her fingertips along his skin and scars. Another awful thought, unendurable.

Tonight, today, tomorrow, she can stay and give him this, the calm unspoken promise of affection. Julie knows she won't be able to every night, sometimes she will likely still slip away feeling like a stranger, still walk the city until dawn while Miller tosses and turns and sleeps. But tonight the stars don't call her, tonight she can just go back to her dreams.

Joe shifts again and his breathing changes. He does not turn, not yet. He is lying there, listening for her, and Julie realizes her breath is quiet, he must think her gone. 

She turns, runs fingers up his ribs. Joe rolls over to face her, watching through bleary eyes. He lifts an arm in invitation and she slides closer letting him hold her. She tucks her head under his chin. The hand that is trapped between them brushes through the hair on his chest and the other traces lines along his spine. For his part Joe wraps her up in both long arms, breathes in the smell of her hair, and relaxes. She can feel muscles in his shoulders uncoil, can barely hear the gentle rattle in his left lung that never leaves and that he won't explain. 

She wants to tell him she loves him, she wants to explain that she is here tonight and tomorrow, and while she may not be here every morning she is happy every morning when they are together. The words don't come.

Julie leans up, pressing open mouthed kisses to his neck and collar, feeling him wake up again under her palms.

"Julie?" He asks, and she knows what he's really asking: are you alright, what's going on, is something wrong?

The words are still impossible, so Julie resorts to rolling him onto his back, straddling him to kiss him deeply, sigh against his lips in the darkness, "I can't sleep."

"Yeah?" Joe smiles, she feels it against her skin. He rolls them over sleepily and grazes his fingers over her lips in a nonverbal reply. She knows what it means, had to ask a friend who knew the casual sign language of his childhood to find out, but would have guessed even without an explanation. Neither of them has said the words since that first night, but he has managed this at least, has managed the sentiment. So she will manage to stay, tonight. 

They make love gently, pausing over and over to talk and laugh, to kiss, to whisper to each other, and eventually fall asleep tangled together and tacky with sweat.

In the morning Julie wakes first, again, and pulls on her undergarments. She knows the house well enough that she doesn't even need to wake up fully to find a bag of coffee and make a fresh pot. She skips the milk since her first glance through Miller's refrigerator is too confusing to fully understand without caffeine and instead doubles up on sugar.

"You made coffee?" Joe stands in the doorway squinting in the morning light in his pajama pants and nothing else. 

Julie acknowledges the ache in her chest at the sight of him, the swell. She pours a second cup and hands it to him, then sips her own coffee-flavored-syrup and nods, "Is your fridge full of flowers?"

"Ah, yeah," He sips from the mug tentatively, pauses to assess the temperature, then gulps down half the cup in one go. "I have to go to a funeral this afternoon."

Julie nods like this is normal, "I'm sorry."

"Don't be. He was a crooked cop and a piece of shit," Joe refills his cup. "I, uh, think I got eggs in there too. Hidden under a hydrangea, maybe. Can I make you breakfast?"

As he walks past her to open the refrigerator door he trails a hand along her thigh idly, casually, like he does it all the time.

Julie grins, feels her cheeks almost ache with the unexpectedness of it, and is surprised at how despite her having predicted this the thought of him fixing breakfast still makes her genuinely happy.

"Yeah, I would love some eggs."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well I've been sitting on THAT chapter for three months. Jesus, glad to get it TF out of my draft folder.
> 
> Apologies for the delay folks: you know the drill, life happens and sometimes even escapism feels like a chore. Not to be TMI on alt, but my parents are going Through Some Shit and I'm learning to set boundaries and it's a whole Thing. I'm getting there (and learning not to care if they are or aren't).
> 
> As always crits/comments/corrections are very appreciated. <3


End file.
